Strangest Movie Experiences

[Head Mutant]

What's one of the strangest, most odd, or most unusual movie-watching experience you've ever had? Or more than one? Maybe it's something funny or even aggrivating.

And who knows... if we get enough interesting responses in this thread, it could become an article!

[PoolMan]

Well, I know you and me watching Charlie's Angels with the entire Morningwood Senior's Home sitting behind us was a seriously unique experience.

"Has the movie started yet?"

Also, Episode I: first time in my life I'd ever gone to a movie where audience members carried lightsabers. LIGHTSABERS!!!

[HeyCreepy]

I have a really crappy cinema that has given me my share of strange movie experiences.

1) I saw the movie Drive Me Crazy in the wrong order (they messed up the reels). The sad thing is, it was more entertaining that way.

2) During The Little Mermaid, the song 'Kiss the Girl' was cut short when the film burned. It looked kind of cool, though.

3) At a different theater during Drumline, someone went 'shhh' to a person in the front row. This person stands up, turns around and says "Who just shhhushed me? Huh? Comon, speak up! I paid money to be here to....who went 'shhhh' to me?" The whole theater was afraid that there was going to be a fist fight in the middle of the movie. Thankfully, she sat down when no one would fess up. Again, that was more entertaining than the movie.

4) During Kill Bill, when the old 'Our Feature Presentation' covered the screen, someone behind me said "Good lord, this had better be a joke!"

5) Had the entire theater to myself and my 2 other friends for Daredevil, Rush Hour 2, Down to You and Snow Dogs.

6) Recently, the first time this has ever happened, during the movie Miracle....people clapped during and after the movie was finished. I had never experienced that before and it was awesome.

I may think of more.................

[Head Mutant]

About the clapping thing, it's weird. I've read articles by some people who are quite peeved when people clap after a good movie, but I personally like it. If it's a good movie. But the circumstances to get a huge clapping crowd is a bit chancy... in my experience, it's usually during the first weekend run of a film, packed audience, and really good flick.

[DocD83]

Well, maybe this isn't so much wierd as it is annyoing, but anyway:

When I saw The Two Towers in the theater I was in a group of eight or so and I was the youngest one among them, at 19. I didn't notice the rest of the (nearly) full house being particlarly young either, which is why I was surprised when they got to Theoden's line, "Let this be the day we draw swords together" or whatever it was, and EVERYONE in the theater broke out in uproarious laughter. Oh come on, really. I was wrapped up in the movie, and now I'm yanked out of it by a joke my dirty-old-man of a brain wouldn't have found funny even out of context. Gah.

[FiveMileSmile]

I've got a few as well.

1)

Me and one of my friends went to see 'The Crow' rather late in it's release run; everyone else we knew had seen it, but we'd both missed it somehow but found a showing about 4 weeks after its release. So we went, entered the cinema with popcorn and soda, and it was expectedly nearly empty, just another couple of people. So we sat down in prime seats, and chatted through the adverts.

As we're doing so, the doors to the cinema open and a trio of elderly pensioners, two women and a gent, totter into the cinema, and sit down across the aisle from us. I look at my friend and we assume that they must be here for some other film (there was a specific film, but I cant remember what it was now). We debate warning them, but decide to guage their reaction when they realise they're in the wrong film.

They sat through the entire thing, which left us with a new respect for them.

2)

For those that don't know, I suffer pretty badly from insomnia; and one of the ways I would deal with that would be that if I couldn't sleep, I would go and watch whatever late night films were on at my local cineplex.

One night in question, and the only night this has ever happened to me, I went to see William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (the Baz version) at 1am and had the entire cinema to myself. It was great, like having the worlds best TV.

3)

Our local cinema in my small town (before it closed down) was, to be fair, a bit of a dive. It was a dingy little 1 screen thing, and nothing worked very well. The very last film it showed before shutting down was a midnight showing of The Blues Brothers; however, because the heating had broken down, the audience (all 10 of us) were given blankets to put over us as we watched the film. That cinema is now a trendy nightclub. Go figure.

4)

The final one is just a shameful act on my part, but I'll relate it because its obliquely cinema related. As a youth, myself and my friends would often gather under the trees outside the town hall in the summer time to drink cheap wine called Thunderbird and go see a film. Now, we were young, and stupid, and drinking was a new thing for us, so quite often we got absolutely wasted, but at least still able to stand, see, and think. However, on this particular occassion, one of my friends had a prior engagement at the last minute, and another had just broken up with his girlfriend so was at home listening to country music (the music of pain), which meant that the 3 bottles of T-bird we'd originally intended to be split between 5 of us were split between 3.

Two of my friends sensibly stopped drinking after about 2/3rds of a bottle each. However, since I hate to see alcohol go to waste, I drank all of mine and some of theirs as well, to the point where I was absolutely and utterly paralyetic. My drunk friends shepherded me to the cinema where we went to watch Batman Returns. Here's what I remember of the film:

- Get into the cinema
- Watch the first 5 minutes in double vision
- Go to the toilet
- Be absolutely, violently sick everywhere
- Pass out
- Woken up an hour later by one of my friends who finds me passed out in the toilet.
- Taken back to my seat
- Pass out
- Wake up to see the last five minutes in a drunken blur
- Go home.

To this day, I can't watched Batman Returns without feeling nauseous.

- Rich
Fortunately, I'm all better now

[Head Mutant]

Awesome stories... and remember, they don't have to be just of theater experiences, they can be home or other unusual venue experiences as well.

One that pops to mind... when I was up in Canada visiting my girlfriend, I was going to take her to Big Fat Greek Wedding because she'd never seen it. At that time, it had been in the theaters for an ungodly amount of time, like six months or so.

So we bought tickets to the mall theater, and we have lunch waiting for it to start. We sit right in front of a video store, where they're broadcasting the recently *released* MBFGW on their five TVs. I had to convince my girlfriend to move somewhere else, where we wouldn't end up watching the movie we had paid for for free.

[dajaymann]

This one isn't really all that wierd, just pretty entertaining...it involves the strangest and most exciting movie event I've ever had (dum dum DUM) THE PREMIER OF STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE!!!! Keep in mind that I feel the event surrounding the premier was far better than the movie itself.

Anyway: I get tickets to go see the midnight premier of Episode one at the major movie theatre in town. My girlfriend works at this movie theatre, and though she can't get me free tickets, she does hook me up with the military discount or something and decides to go along with me. Of course, she's not really into Star Wars, but she is quite smitten with me (eventually I marry and inpregnate her...), but this isn't her story. So we go with several other friends, and there's about six of us total. Now here's the fun part...

The standard Star Wars Premier dress-up fellows are out (which I enviously am not one of), and mixed in with this bunch are two dudes in full Starfleet regalia. That's right, Star Trek costumes. And they're discretely carrying signs, which no one sees or notices outside the theatre. So then we all get to go in to our seats, and the aforementioned Star Trek fellows march up to the screen and post their signs, one on each side. One says something along the lines of "Star Wars Sucks", the other (and this one I remember word for word) says "Captain Kirk kicks Darth Maul's Hiney". So they get some boos but noone moves to confront these two, or to remove these signs. Until my buddy Sean (sitting right next to me) gets a wild look in his eyes and mutters "I'm going to get those signs".

Now, Sean is a laid back fellow who I was sure up to this point had only two emotions: mildly happy and relatively indifferent. Thus my surprise when he let out some sort of Wookie battle cry, jumped over the seat in front of him, and rushed the screen. He ran to one sign, tore into it with his teeth, and ripped it in half. Then he ran to the other, ripped it in half, threw it in the corner, and simulated peeing all over it (there was no actual exposure on his part, it was just for play). Then he came back to his seat, and became my hero.

So after that the rest of the movie was kind of a letdown.

[Uber]

Several funny movie experiences here:

• Three 20-something "Jedi" at the opening show of Attack of the Clones being laughed at so much that they looked about ready to cry. Here's a hint: when you dress up in movie costumes, pretend you're fighting a lightsaber battle using the equivalent of painted plastic mop handles and it's not Halloween, be prepared to get laughed at
• Being the only single guy in the theater for Bridget Jones' Diary and hearing couples ask each other who the weirdo is (I have pretty darn good hearing)
• My mom & sister told me about the time they went to go see Uptown Girls for free. It was them, about 100 teenaged girls and one 60-something man sitting off in the corner. Now that's just creepy.
• So many to list when going to Rocky Horror that it isn't funny

[puggyd]

I was in seventh grade when "Men in Black" came out. And the hype around it was so huge, in my head at least, that I was convinced that the movie was going to be on par with the second coming of Christ. So opening night a friend and I were going to both go dressed up like MIB, suit, shades, and all.

My friend never showed. So I was just a singular MIB, feeling very stupid. I ditched the shades quick so people would think maybe I was just dressy, but I heard people wondering out loud if I was all dressed up for no reason because I was Mormon.

And then the movie wasn't all that great, either.

[Robert]

A few instances...

1) This time I was the unusual guy in the theater... At the end of Phantom Menace I yelled at the top of my voice something along the lines of "That wasn't very good now, was it?" kicked up a fuss about Jar Jar and got thrown out. I was banned for 2 weeks, it never happened again.

2) While seeing Titanic with some female friends of mine, I was being clung on to for dear life by the two girls sitting next to me. They were so into it but what they didn't realise it was based on a true story, So I had to spoil it for them..."Guess what? It sinks!".

3) Jackass the movie was filled with a pathetic group of kids who dressed up to look like the crew. Evidently the guy who was 'Bam Margera' got cocky and his crew got beat up by a bunch of people outside the cinema.

[puggyd]

Ooh, immediately as the end credits started to roll at the midnight showing of "LOTR: The Two Towers" my brother stood up and yelled loudly "Elijah Wood? F*ck that, wasn't he in 'North'?"

Then he ran away. Quickly.

[DarthToad]

I remember when I went to see episode two there were two kids doing a lightsaber battle and this guy was totally getting killed so I was like "hey, I can do better than that!" and he said "Come on." So I did a lightsaber battle and, even though I did better than him, I still lost. But it was fun.

When I saw Batman Forever (I'm only 16, remember, so I'm still a little kid) there was this tornado going on so the picture was totally blacked out for about 10 minutes.

What else...nothing really...I need more weird stuff to happen to me...

[Genetic Mishap]

Do nature specials count?
I've always loved nature specials, and one fine day (I was at most 6 years old) I was watching one of my favorites- a taped 1990 special on snakes. (Creativly dubbed "Snakes")

Anyway, I'm watching it in my room; Mom's in her room exercising. I think I see something slithering up my window. I go to her room to report the occurance, but as soon as I enter I tell mom "...Naw, nevermind, it was probably my imagination", and I left her baffled as to what I was talking out (at this point in my life, I had my mom's dread phobia of snakes) .

I resume my watching of the dreaded snakes, and I fearfully glance out my window. I run back to my mom's room.
"Mom, it wasn't my imagination; there's a big snake out my window."
Oh, wicked coincendence and irony! To have a six foot black snake slithering up my window whilst watching a special on snakes! Bizarro!
So, my mom promptly had one of my dad's truck drivers chop it up with a shovel (I reinterate that this was before I became the patron goddess of snakes and bitter foe towards those who chop said snakes up with shovels)

[HeyCreepy]

oooh ooh, I have another one:

I was watching 'The Ring' alone and was really getting into it and then.......the phone rang. Made me jump to the ceiling.